The 5th Assembly District stretches from Auburn and Newcastle south nearly to Fresno, including much of the Mother Lode and the central Sierra.
Incumbent Republican Frank Bigelow is challenged by Democrat Robert Carabas. Their answers to questions submitted by the Auburn Journal are below.
Frank Bigelow
If elected, what will be your top priorities and why?
Voters approved the Prop. 1 water bond in 2014 because they know our one of our top priorities should be new water infrastructure. I agree with them. We need new water storage. As a rancher, I know firsthand that what our state really needs in terms of water is more above-ground water storage. I was an architect of the statewide water bond and I intend to see us break ground on new water storage for California.
What role should state lawmakers play in police reform?
I’m endorsed by the Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC), the California Highway Patrol and police and sheriffs from across this great district. Part of the reason I have the support from local law enforcement is because I know these brave men and women put their lives on the line each and everyday. The state can and will work with them on any police reform that may be needed, but we first need to recognize the outstanding job our local law enforcement does protecting our communities. I am honored to stand with our outstanding law enforcement professionals.
What is your most significant professional achievement?
I’ve been blessed to have many professional achievements, but no matter what comes my way, my biggest achievement in life is my wonderful family - my loving wife, my great kids and my fantastic grandchildren.
Where do you stand on Prop. 64, which would legalize recreational use of marijuana?
I would not legalize recreations use of marijuana and I oppose Prop. 64.
What words or phrases do you live by?
“The only place that success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
“A cowboy’s word is his sacred bond.”
What can be done to address affordable housing challenges in Placer County and across the state?
We must continue to forge partnerships between the state, local governments and local builders to address affordable housing challenges. As part of our commitment to ending homelessness, the Legislature recently passed the No Place Like Home initiative, a package of bills to provide the homeless mentally-ill and homeless veterans with long-term supportive housing, paid for with existing funds. These measures will help social service agencies provide the homeless and our returning veterans with the care they need, getting them off the streets and into a stable living situation.
In what professional/career area do you most need to grow and improve?
I am a servant of the people. My goal is to always be their voice. I strive each year to put more miles on the odometer of my pickup truck than the year before. I will strive to continue to get out and see more and more of the great people that I serve.
What should be done to address expanding state employee pension costs?
This past year I supported some of the first collective bargaining agreements between the state and employees where employees were pre-funding their retiree health care. We must continue to strive to form innovative partnerships that benefit the state and the state’s hardworking employees.
Do you feel the state should do more to address climate change? If so, what?
I’m a farmer and a rancher and love the environment, but California has gone too far to address climate change. The state doesn’t need to do more, we need to work with local communities to find solutions that work locally. The one-size-fits-all approach from Sacramento has created more problems than it has solved.
Robert Carabas
If elected, what will be your top priorities and why?
For 35 years after WWII wages grew with the economy leaving the average family of four with 25 to 35 percent of their earnings after expenses to buy a home or pay for college educations. Today that family with both parents working is flat broke after expenses. If California went to a single payer healthcare system modeled after Canada’s, we could return $8,000 a year to that family. That family could then buy a home over time or educate their family—it’s really up to us.
California is the world’s 6th largest economy. Not only could we do it, we would save money. If America went to a single payer healthcare system we could save enough to pay off the national debt in 13 years—that’s how much we’re wasting on an inefficient healthcare industry.
What is your most significant professional achievement?
I have changed my professions several times in my life to do different things that I found interesting. During College I joined VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) and organized communities in Eastern Kentucky. After college I did research for corporate development at a major oil company, later moving to the treasury where I became Corporate Credit Manager. Years later I returned to school to study fine art—drawing and painting—and I was a Skowhegan Fellow. When my wife and I moved to Tuolumne County 16 years ago, I designed straw bale homes. Then I began to study global warming. Fearing for the future of my grandchildren I became involved in politics, hoping to help fellow citizens to see the urgency of moving to a new energy economy.
Where do you stand on Prop. 64, which would legalize recreational use of marijuana?
Making drugs illegal creates a profitable illegal market and encourages criminal activity. However, deregulation will be messy. Laws governing growers and markets will be hard to control and tax. Right now there is a gold rush attitude among growers wanting to make it big, but the markets may be overrun with marijuana and prices may not support grower hopes. I would like to see small growersbenefit, rather than large growers if for no other reason that to see more growersprofit.
A large portion of the profits from marijuana must be used to educate young people about drugs and to treat those who need help escaping addiction. We must stop imprisoning drug users.Prison is a terrible waste of taxpayer money and peoples lives. Making a drug user a felon—thus unemployable—only makes their efforts to escape drugs more difficult.
What words or phrases do you live by?
“Be careful what you wish for: you’re liable to get it.”
“One life.”
What can be done to address affordable housing challenges in Placer County and across the state?
I designed homes for several years. What became clear was that a well designed home costs no more to build and can be comfortable and beautiful. We must stop thinking of affordable housing as a necessary evil. We must rethink building these homes to be smaller, energy independent and water conserving, requiring little to heat and cool, sited out of the risk of fire or flood, easy to maintain,andcontributing to the beauty of our communities. We should be making communities that we all want to live in, not communities where we shun poorer citizens and in the process creating slums the day they are built.In the 5th district we have many small communities. We should encourage greater density rather than sprawl that is dependent on cars. Community density supports local business and local business supports a viable communitywith jobs.
In what professional/career area do you most need to grow and improve?
Professional and career opportunities are driven by skills. Improving writing skills has always been the best investment of my time. Writing short clear essays forces me to think and reason and exposes faulty logic.
Do you feel the state should do more to address climate change? If so, what?
California is leading the world in confronting global warming. Our region, however, has embraced denial. The price is progressively less water, diminishing snow packs, increasingly hotter temperatures that result in dying forests and catastrophic wildfires. Our rain patterns will change with warming oceans. We will have longer, hotter droughts with occasional heavy rains and flooding. Long-term drought will exceed surface storage water reserves: evaporation at 5 feet a year will cut deeply into reserves. We must build distribution systems that capture floodwater and store it in Valley aquifers.
That is the bad news. But just like the moonshots, confronting a challenge is rewarding—space exploration produced satellites, telecommunications, miniaturized computers, and new bi-metals: today’s economy. Confronting global warming will have the same economic impactwith a new energy economy: higher efficiency building techniques, high-speed transportation, battery technology, electric cars, energy independence and water conservation technologies. Let’s embrace the future and its jobs.
Mr. Carabas did not submit responses to questions on rising pension costs or police reform.